The hospital and dental operating rooms are required to have good lighting, particularly in those areas of operating rooms that are used for performing surgical operations. In addition, there is a need to focus lighting especially on those parts of a patient's body that are about to undergo surgical procedures.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,803,727 B2 discloses a lighting system, which is intended particularly for lighting an operating table. The system employs a pointer for focusing a lighting arrangement intended for lighting the operating table and mounted on the operating room ceiling.
The focusing is conducted by placing the pointer in the proximity of a body part on which the focusing of lighting is desired. The pointer's location is detected, for example optically, by detection instruments in communication with the lighting, whereby the location of an object of illumination, i.e. the pointer, is calculated-by-a-data-processing-unit-of-the-lighting and communicated thereby to an adjustment mechanism of the lighting arrangement made up by lighting modules, which focuses the lighting on the discussed site.
Alternatively, the focusing is conducted for example with a helmet fitted with a head-held infrared pointer in such a way that, when wishing to focus the lighting on a given site of the body, the surgeon aims the helmet's IR pointer thereat. A bright light spot visible at the indicated site is detected with an IR camera, whereby the data processing unit of lighting calculates, on the basis of information received from the IR camera, the location of an object ad communicates it to an adjustment mechanism for focusing the lighting on the desired site.
A problem with the foregoing focusing practices, when the desired object of illumination is located for example in the ear canal or in the mouth, is the directing of lighting in such a way that light is able to penetrate to the object as unimpededly as possible so as not to create distracting shadows on the object.